Truth be told, I have been sitting on this for a while. Ever since I started using eBird to help catalog my bird observations, there has been a longing for more. I’ve longed for a social aspect of eBird. A website where I could follow fellow birder friends and connect with new ones. I’ve created this eBird mockup for fun and will run through a few of my ideas.
Global Navigation Bar
The navigation bar is quick place to find data on eBird, access private messages, see notifications, and, of course, submit a new observation.
- Universal Search – a powerful search bar that can be used to search for fellow birders, locate an eBird hotspot, or view a species range map
- Messages – view and send private messages and group messages to fellow eBird users
- Notifications – photo comments, status/sighting/comments, event invitations and other interactions will show up here
- Submit Observation button – enough said
Profile Navigation
Each eBird social profile is sectioned off into five areas: bird stream, observations, photos, life list, and events.
- Bird stream – an activity stream of your birding activity: recent observations, incidental sightings, photo uploads, events joined, status updates, and so on
- Observations – view all the checklists for an individual user—see where they’ve birded lately
- Photos – a list of all photos they’ve uploaded to bird sightings and to their profile
- Life list – a quick way to see a user’s life list and other bird lists.
- Events – see events that a user is planning on attending or leading (if they have listed them publicly)
Being a young, tech-savvy birder myself, I find it frustrating that there is not a central place to discover/organize bird walks, connect with birders, and share my experiences. There is a great need to attract a new generation of birders. With the popularity of eBird, Cornell and Audubon have a huge opportunity to create a solid destination for the entire birding community that extends far past recording bird sightings.
Here is the mockup I’ve created. I started working on a rough HTML version, but this is the general idea. Some features from the existing eBird still need to be taken into account in future versions, such as “Explore Data.” There are additional features you’ll find in the mockup that were not mentioned above.
